THIS BLOG OPPOSES DRACONIAN LAWS & POLITICAL SCAPEGOATING BY SOME POLITICIANS! * THE PUNISHMENT IS THE CRIME * FOR A WORLD WITHOUT VIOLENCE * WHERE DOES THAT COME FROM? * A) DALAI LAMA: "LOVE, PEACE AND KINDNESS YOU CAN'T BREAK IT." * B) FREDERICK NIETZSCHE: "LOVE YOUR ENEMY." * THERE IS ALSO FORGIVENESS BUT YOU DON'T GET THE COMPLETE PROTECTION UNLESS YOU ACCEPT BOTH OF THE A & B CONDITIONS * & FOR THAT YOU MUST COME TO TERMS WITH C) FORGIVENESS * :-)

Friday, 25 July 2008

Condoleezza Rice is finished as a Black political asset of the White Man’s (War) Party. Image (The Black Commentator)

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has touched down in Perth.

[But Rice's complete and abject identification with her master leaves her with nothing of her own to claim.]

Rice has been forced to enter a dinner hosted in Perth in her honour through a back entrance, because of a group of anti-war protesters camped outside.

[Rice will always have a job with the Bush family (she served the father, too) or with Chevron-Texaco Oil (where she worked between Bushes).

Rice’s selfless renderings to the white and wealthy have earned her a lifetime of…more of the same. Should she crack under the weight of her own and her masters’ lies – as sometimes seems imminent – there is a commodious attic in one of the Bush domiciles where “Condi” can be safely stored.]

Rice's whirlwind journey to Western Australia is allegedly not an official diplomatic visit, but has been described as a personal trip to Mr Smith's home town.

The Secretary of State was greeted on the tarmac by Western Australian Premier Alan Carpenter, Minister for Immigration Chris Evans and US Ambassador Robert McCallum.

Outlived usefulness

[In the false glow of their delusions, Republicans truly believed that Condoleezza Rice was the ultimate political asset – a Black woman who could by her presence wash them clean of racist stench, and then perform the same ablution the next day, and the next. Rice made it easy for the super-privileged to love themselves.]

However, [Rice did not bargain or seek her own space, but settled into the very fabric of Bushness. In so doing, however, Rice lost all power of personal agency. Having surrendered everything to the Bushes, her Blackness gradually lost its value as a cloak for her patrons’ racism. The affirmative action opinions of a loyal Black servant carry little weight. That’s when the talk of high office, stopped.]

[Rice’s rich white admirers hugged and squeezed her too tightly – until there was nothing left but them all over her. It is common in African American circles to speak of “lost” Black souls, but in Rice’s case it is almost literally true that she doesn’t know where she stands and to whom she is speaking.]

Rice greeted by protesters

The party went on its way to a dinner at the University of Western Australia with 100 guests. But about two dozen protesters from the Socialist Alliance, brandishing anti-war placards were waiting for Rice outside the dinner.

She was ushered into the function through a back entrance.

Today Rice will visit private girls school Mercedes College in Perth and the Swanbourne Barracks to lay a wreath at the Kings Park War Memorial.

While the Bush-Cheney Administration continues along its destructive path-in documented violation of national and international law - the Democratic leadership of the United States has failed to assume its Constitutional authority and mandate as a co-equal branch of government to hold the Executive Branch of the United States accountable for failing to preserve, protect and defend the rights of the American people.

4+ years after the whole world learned about the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib;

5+ years after Iraq was invaded on the basis of lies, leading to the deaths of more than one million people;

6+ years after Guantanamo opened; and almost 7 years after the Bush Justice Department's USA PATRIOT Act made a mockery of Constitutional protections for the people....

...there will be a two hour hearing tomorrow in the House Judiciary Committee on Kucinich's latest article of impeachment against George Bush for lying about Iraq.

While you have to say to yourself that after 7 years, it's about time for a big fight over the crimes of the Bush regime, I'm not impressed, nor do I think we should be congratulating ourselves.

In the New York Times today, in a story about pardons Bush may issue: "As the administration wrestles with the cascade of petitions, some lawyers and law professors are raising a related question: Will Mr. Bush grant pre-emptive pardons to officials involved in controversial counterterrorism programs?"

As passionate as the arguments of impeachment advocates in and out of Congress, any openings this provides will come to something only with a determined movement of the people who reject the whole direction under the Bush regime.

So, let's keep going out among the people living in this country with truth about this criminal regime. Real hope comes in resisting, and through that resistance, forcing the powers that be to accede to our just demands.

Call in to talk shows, write your newspapers, talk to everyone you know. Hell yes, Bush & Cheney should be impeached, tried, and held to account for the crimes their administration carried out in our names.

TODAY a billboard goes up on University Avenue in Berkeley, near Boalt Hall Law School where John Yoo teaches constitutional law. Fittingly, it says "SILENCE + TORTURE + COMPLICITY". We hope it is hugely controversial, and that members of the university community are challenged to reject the torture state and its apologist, John Yoo, in their midst. Photos soon!

The Army general who first investigated the abuse at Abu Ghraib has accused the Bush administration of committing war crimes. Retired Major General Antonio Taguba made the comment in a new report about US torture practices. Taguba wrote, “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.” Taguba went on to say, “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

With Crises in Fuel, Food, Housing and Banking, What Gvt. Policies Are Being Pushed Through? Naomi Klein Reexamines “The Shock Doctrine”As the country and the world reel from crises ranging from skyrocketing oil prices and global food shortages to housing and climate change, how best to understand the government policies being pushed through? We spend the hour with Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein also discusses Barack Obama’s economic advisory team, whom she calls “Obama’s Chicago Boys”; why she’s suing the US government for spying on journalists like her; as well as her recent trip to China, where she says the government is building a high-tech police state with the help of US military contractors.

The Forgotten War: Sonali Kolhatkar on Why Afghanistan is "Just as Bad as Iraq"Coming on the heels of Barack Obama’s highly publicized visit to Afghanistan—what he calls a central front in the so-called war on terror—we play an address by Pacifica radio host Sonali Kolhatkar, one of this country’s leading voices against the occupation of Afghanistan and co-author of the book Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence. She spoke last month at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis about what she called widespread misconceptions about the occupation of Afghanistan.

In fact, things are getting worse and worse. How many of you know about the fact that violence is up 50 percent since last year in Afghanistan? Afghanistan is a country that’s, by the way, 50 percent bigger in size than Iraq, has a population four million more than Iraq. This is not about a hierarchy of oppression; it’s simply for comparison purposes. So, last year, violence up by 50 percent; 140 suicide bombings in a country that had never really seen suicide bombings as a phenomenon before December 2005; over 50,000 NATO troops, of which about half are US soldiers; US soldiers dying at a rate higher than dying in Iraq, that is, per soldier, more US soldiers dying in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

Afghanistan is just as much a failure as Iraq, OK? We are using the same tactics. We are rounding people up, detaining them, bombing civilians. Associated Press did a count earlier in the year of how many civilians the Taliban had claimed to kill versus how many officially killed by NATO. Guess what? NATO was winning that count. NATO had killed actually more civilians than the Taliban. And we have not heard about that. Afghanistan, just as much a failure as Iraq.

But what are major presidential candidates saying about Afghanistan? Let’s look at the one that most people are excited about saving us from the war in Iraq, Barack Obama, saying the Iraq war has distracted us from Afghanistan. The real war is Afghanistan, according to Barack Obama. He may get us out of Iraq. He may. And he will get us deeper into Afghanistan.

And the only way that we can hold him accountable is if we know what’s really happening there, if we hear the voices of women like Malalai Joya, the Afghan parliamentarian, a young intrepid social worker risen to fame in her country, known as the most famous woman in Afghanistan. You hear her more often on my program, Uprising, and Democracy Now!—Amy has interviewed Malalai several times—than you do in the mainstream media. What is Malalai Joya, this woman that we supposedly have enabled her liberation, what is she saying? She wants the US out of Afghanistan, because they’re doing more damage than good, OK?

The alternative media, unfortunately, are just—you know, are not that much better than the mainstream media on Afghanistan. We could do so much more. We could do so much better on Afghanistan than we have done.

And so, just to go back to that question of what the media have learned from both these wars, is that humanitarian concerns are something that can be manipulated to justify war, that Americans will be hooked on the notion that we can save those brown peoples over there, that we will support war if it’s based on the premise of saving lives, rather than to secure oil flows, etc., capitalizing on a mass sense of well-intentioned superiority that exists in this country that our armed troops can save those brown peoples. The media knows this, because it is part of this fabric. It capitalizes on it, parading a series of grateful spokespeople as proof, rather than giving voice to a majority represented by women like Malalai Joya, who are perfectly capable of saving themselves.

So, if we want to know—if we want to know whether the US media has learned anything about war coverage, let’s just examine the coverage in the lead-up to the war that may or may not happen with Iran, and you’ll have your answer. Thank you very much.

International warships gather off DarwinThe Defence [Military] Department says international warships are sailing into waters around Darwin in preparation for major maritime wargames next week. The Australian Defence [Military] Force is hosting the offshore simulated war exercise, dubbed Kakadu IX.

Australian SAS soldier 'killed' in AfghanistanCasualties: SAS special forces, killers and thieves in Afghanistan digging holes to bury their dead with reports that one Australian soldier has been killed. The reported death of the soldier in Afghanistan would be the second loss Australia has experienced in the attack on the sovereign nation state this year, and brings the nation's death toll from the war to six.

No combat deaths for the quiet imperialistsDESPITE a five-year commitment that has involved almost 14,000 soldiers, Australia will end its war in Iraq without a combat fatality. In contrast, the Americans have lost more than 4000 soldiers; the British have lost almost 180. In Vietnam, about 50,000 Australians served and 520 died; in Afghanistan, where about 8000 soldiers have served, five have been killed.

Oil production has climbed to a post-war high of more than 2.5 million barrels-per-day.

Iraq has raised oil exports to a post-war high, earning billions of dollars to fund reconstruction after Baghdad cracked down on sabotage of its strategic pipelines, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani says he expects 2008 oil revenues to reach $70 billion if oil prices stay high and there are no output disruptions. Mr Shahristani was optimistic Iraqi forces would be able to sustain tight security at oil facilities. That could raise the confidence of [foreign] investors who have been discouraged by [resistance to; the pre-emptive strikes on Iraq by the coalition of the killing, false flag operations by them, to encourage civil war, sectarian violence, Al Qaeda and powerful Shiite militants who had a tight grip on Basra, home to Iraq's biggest oilfields.

"In May, we have exceeded for the first time 2 million barrels-per-day (bpd) as an export rate," Mr Shahristani said. Production had also climbed to a post-war high of more than 2.5 million bpd, he said. Mr Shahristani was confident Iraq could pump up to 2.9 million bpd by the end of 2008. He declined to comment on export levels for June, but senior Iraqi oil officials said last month shipments would run slightly higher because of extra Kirkuk sales from the north.

Army chief admits morale concerns over lack of combatLieutenant General Leahy was responding to public criticism from two infantry officers who have written in the Australian Army Journal. The officers claim that some soldiers are sometimes ashamed to wear the Australian uniform and have been treated with "near contempt" by allies in Iraq and Afghanistan because they are involved in such low-risk missions.

Memorial Day Special…Winter Soldier on the Hill: War Vets Testify Before Congress War veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan came to Capitol Hill this month to testify before Congress and give an eyewitness account about the horrors of war. Like the Winter Soldier hearings in March, when more than 200 service members gathered for four days in Silver Spring, Maryland to give their eyewitness accounts of the injustices occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, “Winter Soldier on the Hill” was designed to drive home the human cost of the war and occupation—this time, to the very people in charge of doing something about it. The name, Winter Soldier, comes from a similar event in 1971, when hundreds of Vietnam veterans gathered in Detroit, and is derived from the opening line of Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, “The Crisis,” published in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” In a packed public hearing this month, the soldiers testified before a panel of lawmakers from the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Today we spend the hour hearing their testimony.

US dockers strike over Iraq warUnion officials say about 10,000 longshore workers who handle cargo along the west coast of the United States have stayed away from work in a one-day protest against the war in Iraq.

'Charge Howard with war crimes'FORMER Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has called for ex-prime minister John Howard and other Western leaders to be charged with war crimes over the conflict in Iraq.

IT'S ALL ABOUT OIL!In 1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a major oil services company, remarked: "I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route which makes both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan.